Good Morning POU.
We’ve all heard of Rosewood and the Tulsa riots. Sadly, those were not the only black communities destroyed by white mobs during Jim Crow. The loss of life was tragic enough, but the loss of family homes, land, heirlooms and community would effect the heirs of these horrific deeds for generations to come.
Between 1824 and 1951 there were over 300 events classified as “White Race Riots” in which entire white communities turned on and destroyed entire Black communities and murdered Blacks in mass. There were 26 such major events and hundreds of smaller ones in major cities and towns across the US during the summer of 1919 alone. This period has been tagged by historians as “The Red Summer of 1919”, because many of the events happened from May to October of that year and the blood of their victims literally painted the streets of America.
That year, tens of thousands of Black Americans were killed, maimed and 375,000 were made refugees, though never being given refugee status, all for economic, social, political and other reasons both real and imaginary. They even killed Blacks for recreation activities in rural areas in events called “Friday Night Boot Burnings” (the burning of a Black man at a stake or bonfire) or ” Picnic” (a slang term for pick a nigger for lynching} Lynching became a common weekly event to kill the monotony of rural life. It was not uncommon for whites to eat, drink, dance and sing church songs as they created a sadistic festive atmosphere, while their victims suffered from torture. White men, men women and children all participated in what was best described by Ida B. Wells-Barnett as ” An orgy of murder and mayhem.”
Many times whites massacred based purely on perceived notions and paranoia, such as in Helena and Phillips, Arkansas in 1919. The white landowners envisioned a Black union meetings was an organized uprising and Negros were planning to kill whites in mass at some future date. The reality was the Black farmers, sharecroppers’ and farm workers held a meeting after forming a union to demand a fair accounting from the whites on their sharecropper accounts, after being cheated for years. They were armed and had no intention of disarming because of what happened in East St. Louis in 1917. When the sheriff attempted to serve a warrant as a pretext to investigating the union meeting, a gun fight ensued and the sheriff was killed and other whites were wounded.
The white landowners feeling depraved, feared a great financial loss and with bloodlust in their hearts over their dead friends, they hunted Blacks like dogs through the woods and killed 25 to 125 Blacks early in the manhunt. The best official death count came to 854. No one knows the actual number because of how the bodies were treated and disposed of. They wounded many hundreds more and caused every Black citizen in every surrounding county to flee for their lives too. Today, Blacks in Helena and Phillips County are now planning to seek reparations for their ordeal. They made it perfectly clear, If you had a Black skin, you had two choices. You were either dead, or moving. Floaters (dead bodies in the river) were popping up daily for weeks after the riot was over.
During the Red Summer Riots of 1919, a common characteristic in every case was the Black American was alone and helpless when it came to protecting or defending himself and his community.
In the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, police flew airplanes and dropped nitroglycerin and dynamite on 600 Black businesses, burned 1500 homes and destroyed a 35 square block area of the Black community of Tulsa also known as the Greenwood District. It was so prosperous it was nationally known as Black Wall Street. The riot was intended to put Blacks back in their place.
The Ocoee Massacre was a violent race riot that broke out on November 2, 1920, the day of the presidential election of 1920, in Ocoee a city in Orange County, Florida. African-American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground, and as many as 56 African Americans may have been killed throughout the conflict. The African-Americans residing in Ocoee that were not direct victims of the race riot were later driven out by threats or force. Ocoee would then become an all-white town and remain as such “until sixty-one years later in 1981.” The riot is still considered the “single bloodiest day in modern American political history.”
The race riot was started as a white mob’s response to the persistence of Mose Norman, an African American, to vote on election day. Mose Norman was ordered and driven away when he first attempted to go to the polls. When he came back to the polls later, with a shotgun, he was driven away by whites, who would later form a mob to search for him. The white mob then surrounded the home of Julius “July” Perry, a prosperous local African-American farmer and contractor, where it was believed Norman was taking refuge. After Perry drove away the white mob with gunshots, the mob called for reinforcements from Orlando and Orange County, who then laid waste to the African-American community in Ocoee and eventually killed Perry. Norman would escape, never to be found. Other African Americans would flee into the orange groves, swamps and neighboring towns, leaving their homes and possessions behind.
East Saint Louis Race Riot of 1917, (July 2), bloody outbreak of violence in East St. Louis, IL, stemming specifically from the employment of black workers in a factory holding government contracts. It was the worst of many incidents of racial antagonism in the United States during World War I that were directed especially toward black Americans who were newly employed in war industries. In the riot, whites turned on blacks, indiscriminately stabbing, clubbing, and hanging them and driving 6,000 from their homes; 40 blacks and 8 whites were killed.
Atlanta was considered to be a prime example of how whites and blacks could live together in harmony; however, with the end of the Civil War an increased tension between black wage-workers and the white elite began. These tensions were further exacerbated by increasing rights for blacks, which included the right to vote. With these increased rights, African-Americans began to enter in the realm of politics, began establishing businesses, and gaining notoriety as a social class. These newly acquired African-American rights brought increased competition between blacks and whites for jobs and heightened class distinctions.
These tensions came to a boil with the gubernatorial election of 1906 in which M. Hoke Smith and Clark Howell competed for the Democratic nomination. Both candidates were looking to find ways to disenfranchise black voters because they felt that the black vote could throw the election to the other candidate. Hoke Smith was a former publisher of the Atlanta Journal and Clark Howell was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Both candidates used their influence to incite white voters and help spread the fear that whites may not be able to maintain the current social order. These papers and others attacked saloons and bars that were run and frequented by black citizens. These “dives”, as whites called them, were said to have nude pictures of women, some of whom were white. Competing for circulation, the Atlanta Georgian and the Atlanta News began publishing stories about white women being molested and raped by black men. These allegations were reported multiple times and were largely false accusations.
On September 22, 1906, Atlanta newspapers reported four alleged assaults on local white women. Soon, some 10,000 white men and boys began gathering, beating, and stabbing blacks.
In all cases of these race riots, not one white person was ever convicted of murdering a Black person regardless of how horrible their crimes. Hate was part of the fabric of white American society. They protected their “Supreme” status at all cost. Black Americans had no value and no rights. Blacks weren’t people and in political discussions Blacks existence was referred to as the “negro question”. Blacks were de-humanized so whites could commit any heinous act without guilt and with impunity.
The methods of murders in white race riots were similar in each case, which included but not limited to: Lynching, burning, castration, stoning, bullet riddling, just plain shot, dragged in the street, drowned, beat, punched, hit with assorted objects, heads split with an axe and more than can be imagined. It was common for a single Black victim to incur all of the above forms of punishment from his fellow American. Bodies have been subjected to this type of treatment with as many as 100 plus individual whites to 1 Black victim. Many bodies were reported to be punished for hours after the victim was already dead.
They became merchants of the macabre as they cut up the victims bodies into parts for resale as, souvenirs, mementos, and mantle pieces. Black victims had hearts, lips, ears, fingers, spleen, liver, lungs, intestines, penis, hands, heads, scrotum and all other body parts and even the Black fetus was not spared.
A poor Black pregnant woman Mary Turner in Valdosta, Georgia, had her unborn child cut from her womb as she burned at the stake. While she was inflamed a white man stepped from the crowd, slit her stomach with his pocket knife, and when the fetus fell to the ground, he stomped it and said “One less nigger”. Thousands of curbside spectators slapped their knees as they laughed in amusement.
Mary’s crime: She had disputed the word of a white man that falsely accused her husband of murdering a white man in a dispute over money owed him by the white man. A shoot out ensued. The white man died in what otherwise was a fair fight. For her protest after they lynched her husband before her eyes, they tied her to a tree, poured gas on her, oil and set her on fire. After she writhed silently in the flames in defiance of the “mad and hungry dogs”, she was doused a second time as white children danced and chanted in song and rhyme. Following the lynchings, more than 500 black residents fled the area, despite threats against the lives of anyone who tried
The murder of Turner and her child received diverging coverage in white and black newspapers; white newspapers failed to mention her pregnancy, while black reports emphasized it. After the incident, the Associated Press wrote that Mary Turner had made “unwise remarks” about the execution of her husband, and that “the people, in their indignant mood, took exception to her remarks, as well as her attitude”.
The legacy of these acts penetrate until this day. Surviving relatives lived with the trauma that passed down to their children. The loss of homes, assets, heirlooms and land contribute to the ever declining wealth of the black family. The effects of Jim Crow remain in place.
Video: Author Grif Stockley introduces us to a little known, but devastating story in Jim Crow era Arkansas. The author looks at the evidence from this event as letters, interviews, newspaper and trial transcripts help reveal the tale of the slaughter of at least 20 African-American sharecroppers who had dared to meet and then protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners.ho